Greenwashing Fashion: How Brands Sell Sustainability

For many shoppers, terms like “eco-friendly,” “sustainably sourced,” or “recycled material” are enough to convince them to purchase a piece of clothing. In fact, 65% of fashion consumers have been reported to care about the environment, making them more likely to spend more on sustainable options. 

But do consumers really know what these terms mean? With growing pressures from consumers and governments to meet sustainability goals, many companies have resorted to “greenwashing” to maintain customer support without investing in meaningful, impactful solutions.

What is Greenwashing?

According to the United Nations, greenwashing is defined as “misleading the public to believe that a company or other entity is doing more to protect the environment than it is.” This may involve making vague, misleading, or irrelevant claims, or in certain cases presenting completely false information about a brand’s sustainability performance. The practice of greenwashing has become far more common than consumers may realize, with a reported 53% of green claims being vague, misleading, or unfounded.

Greenwashing in the Fashion Industry

Greenwashing is prevalent in the fashion industry, a sector known to adversely affect the environment across its supply chain. With the growth in global demand for fast fashion, brands have adopted business models that incentivize overproduction of garments, intensive resource use, and environmental pollution. 

As consumers have become increasingly aware of these problems, they have demanded greater transparency and sustainability from fashion companies. However, instead of making necessary changes that address the environment, many brands turn to greenwashing to maintain customer support. An analysis by Truth in Advertising found that over the past decade, 9% of class action lawsuits against greenwashing have involved the clothing and textile industry.

Shein: EvoluShein or Exploitation?

Shein, the largest fast fashion brand in the United States and the largest online-only fast fashion retailer in the world, has been the subject of numerous greenwashing accusations. In April of 2022, Shein released their “EvoluShein” campaign. The brand touted its use of “green” and “recyclable” materials and claimed to support a circular economy. However, Shein faced a 1.16 million dollar fine from the Italian Competition Authority in August of 2025 as these claims were found to be misleading and overstated. This followed a 40 million euro fine just a month earlier by France’s competition regulation authority.

Additionally, critics have argued that Shein emphasizes insignificant or mandated sustainability improvements rather than addressing their business model and supply chain as a whole. A Yale Climate Connections article from 2024 notes Shein’s rapid garment production, with as many as 10,000 new designs being released every day. Their production goals are reportedly upheld through exploitative labor practices, environmental pollution, and a massive carbon footprint. Despite pledging to reduce emissions by 25% by 2030, Shein’s emissions doubled from 2022 to 2023 and rose 23.1% in 2024.

Zara: New Initiatives, Same Industry

Zara, a pioneer of the fast fashion industry, has also been criticized for greenwashing. In 2015, the brand began rolling out its “Join Life” labels, a sustainability initiative launched by its parent company, Inditex. These labels were ultimately removed from its products in 2023, as they were deemed “no longer necessary.” The product line was advertised for its use of “eco-friendly” materials, such as organic cotton, recycled polyester, and lyocell (wood pulp). Though select items may be made from more sustainable materials, like Shein, Zara is built upon an inherently unsustainable fast fashion business model.

In 2022, Zara introduced a “Pre-Owned” campaign, which claims to streamline clothing resale and repair. However, these types of programs only address the end of the life cycle, allowing the company to continue overproducing clothing. It also places responsibility on the consumer to initiate environmental solutions rather than addressing the corporation’s role in creating the problem in the first place.

H&M: Conscious Claims Under Criticism

Swedish fast fashion retailer H&M faced similar accusations surrounding its “Conscious Collection”. First launched in 2010, H&M’s Conscious collection advertised its use of materials like cotton, linen, recycled polyester, and lyocell. They have also released multiple limited “Conscious Exclusive” collections focused on innovating sustainable textile technology.

However, the brand phased out its Conscious marketing following a 2022 lawsuit and investigation surrounding the accuracy of their claims. A report published by Quartz found that H&M used environmental scorecards containing overstated and, in many cases, completely false claims about the brand’s sustainability. 

H&M has also implemented a clothing circularity program under the slogan “Let’s Close the Loop.” The garment collection service was introduced in 2013, and sorts returned clothing to be sold, reused, or recycled. Yet in 2023, an investigation by the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet found that some items brought to H&M to be recycled were ultimately lost or sold to third-party recycling companies. Instead of “closing the loop” as advertised, the garments traveled thousands of miles from where they started, contributing to the textile waste crises in Europe and the Global South. Even if the program worked as intended, like Zara, these solutions require consumers to address the clothing waste problem and do not sufficiently offset the massive scale of H&M’s manufacturing. 

What Needs to Change?

Overall, brands must increase their transparency in marketing campaigns to allow consumers to make informed decisions about their purchases. Some legislation is in place to regulate environmental claims, such as the “Green Guides” enforced by the US Federal Trade Commission, which are undergoing revisions for the first time since 2012. The UK Competition and Markets Authority has similar regulations in place through its “Green Claims Code”, and the EU has adopted the “Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition” directive. 

These policies provide a legal framework for ensuring that environmental claims are truthful, clear, and comprehensive. However, enforcing anti-greenwashing legislation remains difficult due to varying rules across states and countries, limited resources for monitoring, and a lack of consumer education. Enforcing legislation through consistent criteria and careful monitoring is key to keeping consumers informed and advancing meaningful sustainability initiatives.

How to Recognize Greenwashing

Though brands and corporations should be held accountable for honest marketing and reducing the environmental effects of manufacturing, consumers can also make an impact by learning what greenwashing “red flags” to look out for. Greenwashing has been broken down by COSH into “Seven Deadly Sins,” building on the “Six Sins” identified by TerraChoice in 2007 and the framework’s subsequent development into seven sins, as described by UL Solutions. These common tactics include:

• Vague terminology: using broad or undefined terms, such as “eco-friendly” and “all-natural”
• Hidden tradeoff: claiming sustainability based on a particular aspect of a product, to the exclusion of other significantly detrimental environmental impacts
• No proof: not providing evidence for a sustainability claim
• Irrelevance: emphasizing an environmental claim that is either irrelevant or legally required
• The lesser of two evils: comparing a product favorably to competitors while ignoring the environmental harm associated with the overall industry or product category
• Greenwashing by unsubstantiated affiliation: falsely implying third-party endorsements or certifications
• Fibbing: making false or deceptive environmental claims

In addition to pressuring brands for transparency, shoppers should do their own research to verify sustainability claims. Resources such as Good on You, B Corp, the FTC’s Green Guides, and the Ecolabel Index can be useful for assessing brand sustainability, ethics, and marketing accuracy. 

Check out EARTHDAY.ORG’s Fashion for the Earth campaign to learn what else you can do to combat environmental challenges caused by the fashion industry.